Step 5: Identify the Business Events

The next step is the identification of all relevant business events that occur within an enterprise. This means when something an event happens, then there is a resulting reaction. For example, a customer signing up for credit at an online Web store represents an "event." It may be desirable to capture this event and make something else happen, such as running an automatic credit check to ensure that the customer is credit-worthy. That consequence may kick off a chain of events at the credit bureau and return the credit status of the customer, which typically fires off still other events, such as notifying the customer through e-mail that the credit application is accepted or denied. These events are generally asynchronous in nature but can be synchronous in some instances.

This should make clear that, in attempting to understand an application integration problem domain, a real attempt should be made to capture the business events that may take place within the domain. It is important to understand what invoked a business event, what takes place during the event, and any other events that may be invoked as a consequence of the initial event. The end result is a web of interrelated events, each dependent upon the other. Currently, this web exists through automatic or manual processes. In the application integration solution set, all these events will be automated across systems, eliminating the manual processing entirely.